


The Next Six Weeks

by VinHampton



Category: Sherlock (TV), Vinlock - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Break Up, Cocaine, Coping, Depression, Drugs, Emotions, End of Relationship, F/M, Heartbreak, Leaving Home, Loss, Morocco - Freeform, Moving On, Possessive Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings, Sherlock Holmes has a girlfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 01:24:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinHampton/pseuds/VinHampton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After an abrupt break-up, Vivienne takes the next steps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Next Three Days

In the three days following the end, there was a silence. It was the silence of the sands, old and heavy with a primordial understanding; still under the unwaning, cruel light of a desert sun which exposes all wounds and makes blood thick with the venom of a thousand crawling creatures dragging their stomachs across the expanse. 

She disappeared. Unlike the other times, when she hoped to be found, to be won again; she disappeared, swallowed up in the smoke she breathed and the tide of moon-red wine which struck her mind into that silence. 

There had been despair and tears, and then nothing at all but the sound of late night chatter and broken light coming from the small television in her hotel room, atop an emptied mini-bar, alongside half-attempted room service dinners and the smell of unwashed hair. Do Not Disturb - the sign on her door. 

In a drunken daze she tortured herself with the snippets she remembered: his words, her words, all meaningless and meaningful, and she ran them over and over, parting the syllables, until all was silent. Unhappy though she was, she could not heave her pride; nor could she press down her frustration and prepare for another round. Enough. That was the only word that emerged from the empty bottles and the broken shards of sentences, and that presented itself to her lips again and again like a kiss. Enough. 

And so, with a clarity of mind bestowed only to those who have foregone sleep, who have stayed up to watch three sunsets and sunrises over the desert of the city, she began to write, disallowing the indulgence of emotion, a functional backbone of a statement.

 

To: Sherlock Holmes  
From: [Undisclosed address]

Subject: [None]

Sherlock, 

We are breaking each other, and that was never meant to be the way. We made each other impossible promises. I do not wish to be the person who hurts you; nor do I wish to be hurt. I believe some time apart is for the best.

I have deposited your share of the house money back into your account. Mrs Hudson is expecting you back in Baker Street. There is a removal van due at the house in three days to pick up your boxes. Please take your things away. Leave Tesla and Rasputina, and my notebook. If you have trouble taking your beehives, leave them and I will arrange for their relocation. 

Do not try to find me, because I have made sure you will not be able to. You need not concern yourself with my well-being. I only hope you take care of yourself. 

You will hear from me in time. 

V


	2. A Strong Absence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne moves out.

A text from a friendly watcher. 

{Osprey has flown the nest}

And with that she knows it has come to an end. There is no time to think about the vacuum he leaves behind, but she does anyway. She thinks about how he must have pulled the books from the shelves in a hurry, how the dust must have flurried the air, how he would have taken the time to wrap his test tubes and beakers and dishes in old newspapers - perhaps papers they would have read together over morning coffee, the dates bearing evidence of a happier time. She thinks about him removing the loose tile in the bathroom to take away any secrets she knew he hid there. His toothbrush, gone; his pyjamas rolled away into a suitcase, his shirts meticulously folded and the wire hangers swinging without their purpose. 

They do not share a home anymore. 

She does not want to prolong the agony, and that evening she returns to the house where his absence is stronger than his presence. She spends some time sitting on their bed, where they made their promises and found and lost and found each other. His ghost is still palpable, the smell of his hair on the pillows. Empty except for the whiskey which fuels her tonight, she packs her own life away. Books first, then clothes, and then a special box marked ‘V&S’ where she lovingly lays to rest the effects of their life together - the mounted tiger beetle he gave her, the notebooks he wrote about her, he photographs. Reluctantly, she removes the ruby ring from her finger and puts it in its own box. She packs a suitcase for the coming days, packs the cats’ things. The nursery is left intact, the door closed. The quicker it is done, the quicker she will be gone. 

At daybreak, her eyes heavy from sleeplessness, her limbs tired from carrying, she is left with several boxes, a piano, an armchair that used to carry love, two cats who mewl in confusion. She hoists it all into a van that waits outside the house, and then gets into a taxi. 

It is early and she has no strength to look back at the home they built as the car drives away. She stares out of the window instead at London awakening: the rubbish being collected, the shops being opened for the day by half-asleep people, the hum of traffic beginning to grow louder and louder. It is not long before she arrives at the flat she has rented, and she ushers the movers in, the boxes being set down in the empty living room. It is not a big flat, but it will be enough for now, until she figures out the rest of it. A dark brown sofa against the wall; beside it, a window that lets in the light from the east; a carpet with some pattern so faded it is hard to tell what its intentions are. There are two bedrooms: a larger one for her, with a smaller wardrobe than she is used to and a tiny bathroom added on to it almost as an afterthought; and a smaller bedroom with a single bed, with bookshelves and a desk. There is a small kitchen with a small table she can eat on, and not enough space anywhere for her piano, which she has put in storage. In the corridor, more bookshelves, and at the end of it a tiny balcony with a washing line. It is a halfway house, a temporary arrangement. It is what she could get on a short notice. The house is already up for sale, she has left all of that to the agent. She does not wish to step foot in it again. Too painful. Too many memories, too many secrets. 

Over the next few days she gets some sleep and begins to unpack. The box labelled ‘V&S’ is put in the back of her wardrobe and sometimes, out of habit, she tries to play with the ring on her finger only to find it is not there. When she lies in bed at night, it is though an external force is pressing down on her chest, pushing her into the mattress so she cannot breathe or move or fight it. And when she does fall asleep, she wakes up only to grasp hopelessly at the sheets, hoping for an arm, a curl of his hair, the sound of his breath, anything. And so she stops sleeping in bed altogether.

The next week she spends sitting in the armchair which has found a new home in her room, with the curtains drawn shut and her hair unwashed, nursing a glass of wine or whiskey or whatever poison beckons. She doesn’t speak to anyone, doesn’t shower, and doesn’t leave except occasionally to try to eat. The dustbin fills with those attempts. The cats take residence on her lap. A few times, she almost caves and calls him, but then she doesn’t, because the thought of more false promises is even more painful than all of this. 

“You have me, forever”; “I’ll always love you”; “I’ll never hurt you” - so many words. One evening she sits with her gun, locking the bedroom door and running her hands over the cold steel. It would be poetic, almost. And it would be over in an instant. But something stays her hand, and so she drinks some more instead, more and more until her head falls back in a stupor and she falls asleep with her eyes open. 

The days pass by, and outside the world is unaware. And then one morning she drags herself out of bed and hunches over the sink with a pair of scissors. Her face, she sees, is sallow, her eyes sunken, her skin papery and malnourished. She hacks off her hair, leaving it straggly and uneven, barely reaching her shoulders. Her head feels lighter and it gives her the strength to call in at work, where she has been missing except for a few half-hearted messages to Mycroft, who she has no doubt will be aware of their situation.

{You have until next week. I expect you back here on Monday. -MH}


	3. Cuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne is sent away.

The next day, nursing a cumulative hangover which makes her feel like her head has been stuffed to full capacity with cotton wool, Vin drags herself out of the armchair and into the shower, and then out to the hairdresser’s down the road. It occurs to her that, in the very least, if she is to maintain some semblance of normality and start working again, she cannot possibly be haunting the streets looking like she does. The hairdresser, an older Italian woman called Giacinta, who chats away relentlessly, actually stops and hisses at the state of Vin’s hair. 

“What you have done to your beautiful hair?” She complains, looking at Vin with the disappointment only mothers can muster, through the mirror, as she picks at strands of uneven hair, tutting.   
“I just…”  
“I know this. Is a break-up, obviously. I see girls like you all the time. Boyfriend leave them and they get angry with their hair. Is crazy thing!” She taps Vin’s forehead with her comb and Vin winces, wondering whether she should just kill her, right here, slit open her jugular and let her bleed out over the sink. Is crazy thing.   
“Never you worry. Giacinta fix it for you.” And with that, there is a warmth in her eyes. She spreads a towel over Vin’s shoulders and eases her head back against the uncomfortable sink. A muscle between Vin’s shoulders twinges but she doesn’t move. The cool water helps with the headache thumping at the base of her skull, and Giacinta’s fingers in her hair are comforting. She thinks about Holmes washing her hair, the soapy foam beard, them laughing, his fingers on her skin, them pressed against each other, water tumbling over kissing lips… she lets out a little sob and Giacinta clucks to comfort her. 

“You love him, this man?”  
“Very much.”  
“Why he leave you?”  
“I left him.”  
“Why you leave him if you love him, you silly!”  
“Because we hurt each other.” How strangely good it feels to share this with a stranger, one who doesn’t know either of them, to whom they are only Him and Her. Uncomplicated.   
“He hit you?”  
“No, no. But he left, often. For days. And he became annoyed when I asked if he loved me. And he brushed me off like I was stupid.”  
“You stupid girl for doing this to the hair, yes, but is no good he leave you. And that no say he love you. People need to hear this. And you?”  
“Me?”  
“You say you hurt each other…”  
She sighs, wincing a little as her hair is pulled. “I gave up too much for him. I began to resent him. To hate him, sometimes. I needed too much. I needed things he couldn’t give me.”  
Giacinta pushes Vin back up to sitting, rubbing the towel over her scalp to dry her hair and leading her gently to a chair. She doesn’t say anymore but Vin has started now and cannot stop.   
“I wanted a baby, you know? He didn’t want one. A baby girl or boy, a little piece of me and him. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to work but when I did he acted like my work was not important.”  
“What you do?”  
“Er… IT Consultant.”  
“Is very important.”  
“Yes, exactly. And he didn’t understand why I was upset when he put his work before me.”  
“What he do?”  
“Um, he works in a lab.”  
“Is also important.”  
“Yes, of course it is.”  
There is silence now, except for the crisp metallic clipping of the scissors. Giacinta sticks her tongue out in concentration, her heavy bosom nudging Vin’s shoulder as she works. And Vin fixes her eyes on her lap, because she does not like to look at herself in the mirror. Her cheekbones are far too sharp, her eyes far too alarmed, the scar beneath her lips too prominent. 

“My daughter, Carina, she love man who no want baby,” she starts again, the silence proving too much for her. “She leave him too. Now she have man who want baby, and two babies. My nephews, Luca and Silvio.”  
Your grandsons, thinks Vin, though she doesn’t say it. She acknowledges the woman is trying to be helpful.   
“Honestly, I think I am just done with the whole thing. Now it’ll just be me.”  
Giacinta tuts disapprovingly but shrugs, turning Vin’s chair around to cut a fringe. “I make you more beautiful now so all the men whistle at you and this man you love he feel sorry for what he lose, si?”  
“Si,” says Vin with a short laugh. How lovely, if life were that simple. For a haircut to solve everything, a bit of lipstick, a pair of heels. 

\--

Over the next few days, Vin drinks a bit less; eats a bit more. She spends some more time the cats, sees her friend Sebastian again. By the time she goes back to training on Monday, she is feeling a little more like herself. Of course, seeing Mycroft takes her a few steps back. She has to stop herself from asking how he is doing, has he heard from him, is he eating, is he sleeping?

Her fingers wrap shakily around the gun and she misses each one of her targets, becoming angrier, more agitated, fuming, until Mycroft has to physically disarm her. She stands there with her head lowered as he tells her off. Sentiment. Disadvantage. Losing. Her mind screams bloody murder and she blocks the drone of his voice out by fantasizing about the things she can do now that she no longer needs to keep her promises. 

She stalks down an alley behind a man in a suit who looked at her the wrong way. Bam, his insides against the stone wall. She carries a sedated woman with nicer legs than hers into an abandoned parking area and massacres her, skinning her, putting her brain in her stomach, her heart in her mouth. Drunk on dark power and with blood still smeared on her dress she pulls a man into the bathrooms of a pub and lets him fuck her right there, with her face pressed up against the dirty cubicle door with its yellow paint chipping, and then she unloads her gun into his mouth and climbs out the window…

“...on assignment in Morocco.”  
She is shaken out of her imaginary power trip. “...Pardon?”  
“I am sending you out to Morocco for the next phase of your training.”  
“Morocco? Why the fuck…?”  
Mycroft smirks. “You seem to harbour the illusion you have any say in the matter.”  
“You can’t send me to FUCKING MOROCCO.”  
“You don’t have a choice. Well, that is a lie. You have a choice to leave the service once and for all, and there will be no third chance.”  
Vin purses her lips angrily, more than anything because he has a point - to be so far away from home could only propel her forwards, make her stronger.   
“When? When would I go?”  
“Tomorrow.”


	4. Taking Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vivienne leaves for Morocco

It was with a strange mixture of heaviness and giddiness, and a smattering of relief (she had always been a nervous flyer), that Vin looked out of the plane window as they touched down in Agadir Al Massira. Gone was the leafiness and red-brick of her city - that familiarity she had left behind, with her house, their house, his hands, all becoming smaller and smaller and meaningless at thirty-five thousand feet closer to the sun. Here in Morocco, the vast golden sand plains rose up to meet them as they approached, with light hitting metal and glass and sand and refracting an impossible kaleidoscope. If London was blinkered vision, Morocco was technicolour, an expanse of vision that went on and on as far as the horizon. 

The heat was palpable as she stepped off the plane, with nothing but a large backpack, a standard issue sleeping bag and mat, and her feet heavy in the steel-toed boots she’d been given. The baking sun shone down and the heat was so thick you could hold your hand out and swear you were caressing it. Her Arabic was more than rusty, and Berber she had no inkling of, so it was only a few words she picked up here and there as she went through customs with no problem despite her heart pounding heavily and the falsified passport. She certainly did not feel like a Veronica Halstead. She did not feel like anything - an empty vial waiting to be filled with sand or dust or whatever else this new country with its brighter colours and its more pungent smells and its strange tongues saw fit to heave onto her. 

Once she was spat out of the airport security system and onto the dust road outside it, she felt it - the sea breeze. They were close enough to the coast that the air carried a note of saltwater and afternoons that could be spent plunging down into the cool depths, the sounds of the world muffled in favour of her own heartbeat, the resilient pumping of her blood through arteries, using every ounce of air in her lungs… She wanted more than anything to be by the sea. He had promised they would go one day, but they never had. Just as well the sea would never be his. Nor hers, it turned out, as her division leader pushed her gently toward a jeep parked a few metres away. It was rusting around the edges, and the spare tyre was missing from its mount. A prayer of forgiveness from the Koran hung from the rearview mirror and the leather seats were too hot even under her cargo trousers.

The driver, Mehmet, said he hoped she was not expecting air conditioning. Here in Morocco, he said, you sit with the heat and you let it become you. At least he spoke French. It was almost a three-hour drive to Draa Valley and the Sahara desert, inland, far away from the jewel-blue Mediterranean and out in the arid sands where “Allah tests the heart,” Mehmet insisted. Vin had had her heart tested enough for one lifetime so she pressed her cheek up against the cool glass window and watched the landscape as it swelled before them, all palms and limestone houses becoming fewer and fewer until they were overtaken completely by plateaus and red-yellow rock-faces and, finally, sand.

The outpost of the British service in Draa valley was a one-storey building with bars on the windows, which looked like it had been whitewashed with good intentions sometime in the nineties but had then given up on itself. A Union Jack fluttered miserably in the heat alongside the bright red and green Moroccan flag, and a tall, iron-wrought gate with barbed wire glinting menacingly over it surrounded the structure. It looked more like a high security prison than a training centre, and Vin wondered what the difference really was anymore.

Maybe this was hell and she was paying for her sins. Jahannam. 

A ruddy-faced man with white hair and a military look about him checked Vin… Veronica… into the facility. Apparently, it was not standard protocol for 5 trainees to be sent out here for their endurance training. This was a 6 facility. She had not been told this, and she cursed Mycroft for it. She could have argued, taken it up with another superior. She could have been back in London now, with a bottle of wine in one hand and a fag in the other, mourning in the shelter of her darkened room instead of out here, exposed to the elements. So Mycroft was trying to keep her away from his brother. She had a good mind to call him right now and…

“I’ll show you to your bunk.” A voice like butter, from behind her. She turned around to see a man, at least half a foot taller than her, with skin and hair made golden from the sun, and bright green smiling eyes. “I’m Malcolm,” he said, pushing himself off the wall with one strong arm. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”  
“V… er… Veronica…” She held out a hand, which he shook firmly.   
“What’s your real name, Veronica? We have clearance out here, you know?” He smiled, his teeth perfectly white. She giggled. She was giggling.   
“Oh. Vivienne.”   
“Pretty name.”  
She blushed, less because he was complimenting her name and more because he was the first person she’d told her name to in a very long time. Apart from Holmes. Mycroft had known it, of course, being Mycroft. But now it wasn’t so secret anymore. She had protection, she could be Vivienne again.   
“Thanks. My mother gave it to me…”   
“They have a tendency to do that, Vivienne.” He laughed. But it was all wrong. That name in his voice, so different to Holmes’s. She felt like a traitor. She had betrayed him in the worst way.   
“Actually, I prefer Vin. That’s - er, that’s what my friends call me.”  
“Vin it is.”

Malcolm helped her set up her bed - a lower bunk in a room of eight with high ceilings and a few ineffective fans which did nothing but circulate dust. “You get used to it,” he said, noticing the look on her face. “How long are you here for?”  
“Um, four weeks, I’m told. I’m 5.”  
“I heard rumours we’d have one of you lot joining us, yes. Mythical creature, you.”  
“Have you been here long?”  
“Two years. I’m the trainer. I like it here. Clears the mind.” He smiled again and his eyes crinkled up in the corners. This man smiled a lot. “Get settled in. I will see you at dinner… Vin.”


	5. What Happens In Morocco...

That evening, at dinner, Vin was introduced to the people who lived and worked and trained at the facility. Many were younger than her; some older. They came from all over the country - Teresa from Nottingham, who loved Physics and playing the accordion; Nick from Ipswich, who watched Star Trek religiously and spoke Klingon and six other languages fluently; Liam from Manchester, who spoke with a broad accent and drew pictures of everyone when he thought everyone was not watching him; Amy from Bristol, who had worked as an aero-engineer for years before joining up; Jill from Surrey, who missed Jammy Dodgers and was medically trained and had started a fling with Michael from Kent, who could do complex calculations in his head in seconds. 

And of course there was Malcolm. Malcolm was from Cambridge, but he’d lived in Australia for a while during his gap year, which had eked out some of his vowels and turned many of his statements into questions. He’d studied conflict resolution, spoke Arabic, played the guitar, and he’d joined the service eight years ago. He was stationed in Syria first, and then in the West Bank, before he was sent to Morocco to train recruits to 6. He saved Vin a place at the table in the makeshift dining hall and introduced her to the group. (“This is Vin, from London. She’s 5 but we have to make sure she doesn’t hear us whispering about her behind her back. Vin likes horseback riding, opera and long walks on the beach…”)

Vin had laughed. She hadn’t laughed like that in a while. They were good people, all highly intelligent, all highly determined. They shared their food and drank cups of mint tea, and Vin was even offered a few extra pieces of the honey-drenched sweets which made her purse her lips and pull a face. “You’ll get used to them.”

That night, after Malcolm went to sleep, and although they were due a 6am wake-up, they sat out in the sand with blankets draped over their shoulders. She felt like a part of something again, and for a moment even the dull weight that had pressed down on her chest felt like it was lifting. After a while, Liam reached into his pocket and presented a small bag filled with white powder. Vin hadn’t done cocaine in many, many years. She had forgotten how sweet the high was. She felt good, her thoughts clearer, confident about things .

-

Training was tough and the heat stopped for no-one - Malcolm worked her hard, he was unrelentless, unstoppable. But out in the desert, among friends, with a clarity of mind the substance brought to her, she grew hungrier for life, ate more, played harder. She began hitting most of her targets, and then all of them. She could run 10 laps, and then 15, and then 20. Her skin became browner under the sun, she let her roots grow out and turn golden, the green in her eyes became brighter. 

She began to forget what Holmes smelt like, what his body felt like at night, asleep beside hers. She began to forget how many beauty marks he had, where they were. She forgot the smell of his hair. She slept in a bed again. She thought about him less and less now, he was worlds away from what her life was out here in the middle of nowhere. She thought of how he lived in tiny rooms and now she occupied a desert, she lived out under the wild sky, purposeful like the tigress, focused and attuned with the rest of the world. She wasn’t sure if these were her own thoughts or if the cocaine put them in her head, but she didn’t care. She stopped reaching for him at night. 

She had begun to develop a routine. Up at 6, cold shower, breakfast, small hit of powder, training, training, training, dinner, powder, bed. They took it in turns to clean and cook for each other, and she enjoyed the task. Steamed couscous with raisins and dates, lamb tagine when they had been able to get meat from the Berber nomads who passed their way, curried potatoes with fennel, falafel and apricots, and so many olives. As many olives as she could ever have wanted, cold and bitter between the teeth, filling the senses with the pungent taste of the sea and the sour aftertaste of loss. They had moonshine whiskey, sometimes, but not often, and more often they were able to get bottles of wine, though even that was an unreliable system out here in the Sahara. Mostly, they drank mint tea sweetened with honey, which refreshed them during the day and kept them warm during the cold desert nights.

One day, during self defence, her concentration waned for a moment and her partner’s blunted knife caught her lightly, nicking the left side of her face, leaving a long, shallow cut down her cheekbone. It bled for what seemed like a long time but soon that started to heal too, a line of thin scar tissue down her face. And one evening, while they shared their meal with a small camel-back tribe who were travelling north from Algeria, confident from the cocaine, she convinced an old Berber woman to tattoo her hip, anything she wanted. With a sharpened wooden stick and a pot of dark red dye, the woman beat into Vin’s skin an almost perfect circle - perfect, except for three small arcs missing. She whispered the meaning into Vin’s ear in broken French, like a maternal secret from the desert. 

Days passed, then weeks, and the day before she had to leave, the group threw her a party, out there in the cool, still desert night. By now, she had come to depend on a pinch of that white powder. Nothing made her feel quite so alive. They hid it from Malcolm, of course, but that night he sat with them and played his guitar. He was better than he said he was, and his voice was decent, wistful. 

“I fell into a burning ring of fire,” he sang, as she looked on with a smile. The moon was full and from this part of the world you could see every single star shine so bright it looked like the sky was ablaze. “I went down, down, down as the flames went higher,” his fingers were calloused from playing and from the roughness of the climate, his eyes held experience. “And it burns, burns, burns…” 

One by one, as the sun slowly began to whisper its return from beyond the horizon, the blue-black blanket of night tinged with a sensual pink-gold, the others went to bed, until it was just her and him, Vin and Malcolm, sharing a blanket and a cigarette by the dying fire.   
“We’re going to miss you around here, you know?”  
She nodded, sad to be leaving. “You don’t know how much this all has meant to me.”  
“I can see it. You look…”  
“Mm?” She put out the cigarette with a hiss in the sand, scratching her ankle and drinking the last few drops of wine. She thought she knew what he was thinking. That she looked better now. Her face had filled out again, just a little. She’d grown strong, her hips were rounding out. 

Instead, he put his head on her shoulder and she kissed him. Like it was the simplest, most uncomplicated thing in the world. And it was. Two people and the sand and the moon. With no history and no hang-ups, and no expectations. He kissed her too, his hand reaching for her face, his skin rough but his touch gentle. 

He eased her shirt off between kisses. Those exploratory kisses of unknown waters, uncharted geography of skin. There was no beauty mark at the back of his neck. Only golden hair, a small scar by his shoulder, one she didn’t understand. And then he lowered his face to kiss her stomach and thumbed the scar there (“How?” “Bullet.”), and then wondered about the scar under her lip (“Bitten”) and when he danced his fingers over the tattoo on her back and asked whether she played the violin, she froze and apologised and left, pulling her clothes back on as she hurried to bed, squeezing her eyes shut and curling up tight into a ball, leaving him alone and confused. 

“I’m sorry,” he said the next morning, as she packed her things.   
“It’s not your fault. Not you at all,” she said. She didn’t owe him any explanation. “If I had met you any other time… I would…” No need to finish. None of that. She made a promise she’d never keep to meet him the next time he was in London. They exchanged numbers. 

-

The drive back to the airport was shorter than she’d remembered. She hadn’t thought about this at all - returning. How everything would be the same and different and all fucked up. Out here in the desert, where God tests your heart, it was easy to be healed. London was different - it made your muscles tense and your breath shorten. There was no time to stop. 

On the plane, she wrote out a list of things to do. Find a new, permanent house for them. Dye her hair. Meet Sherlock? She’d have to do it sometime. For closure, so they could move on. She felt up to it - almost. She would tell him they could still be friends. She would exorcise him, and then throw everything that was left of him away, start again, better, stronger. Meet somebody new, somebody who’d adore her, who would tell her things she needed to hear, who would make her feel like the only woman in the world. She wished she could stay out a bit longer in the desert. Just another week. But there was no use dwelling now. The plane had taken off. Once again, she was up in the air.


End file.
